Sunday, December 30, 2012

Christmas Eve was pretty eventful and left us all exhausted. Bryson was the last to wake up and as soon as he did, we made our way to see what Santa left under the tree!

Bryson spotted his bike immediately and was in LOVE! He was so excited! He kept calling it his 3 year Christmas bike :)

After some persuasion, he continued opening the rest of his gifts

After everything was opened, we hurried off to Beau and Rebecca's house for our Fant Christmas!!

We had a yummy breakfast and then got to open gifts. Their tradition is to always open one gift at a time starting with the youngest and continuing until everything is open. It's so different than my family, but it's so fun because you get to enjoy everything everyone else gets :)

Emily and Madelynn got to technically open their gift first and they got a 2nd crib! yay!!

Bryson got spoiled with some really fun gifts! He got another zoo membership (yay!!), a trip to the Perot Museum, some toys, roller skates and fun old timey collectable cars.

He was so funny about opening the gifts. He was very careful about taking off the ribbon and on a couple gifts, he had to take off every single piece of tape and stick it in a pile and THEN he could open the present :)

Uncle Beau was quick to jump on the floor and play with him and the awesome cars!! :)

Bryson had to try out his "Geo roller skates"

I always enjoy sitting and talking to all of his family :) I am so abundantly blessed to have married into such a wonderfuly family that I love so much!

Shortly after, we got the beginnings of our white Christmas!! Bryson was getting so excited about the snow...and so was I!! It started coming down harder and harder. SO exciting!!

After a delicious lunch, we headed (slooowly) over to my parent's house for Christmas over there.

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Bryson was in present opening mode so he ran straight over to the tree to look for "presents with the letters B-R-Y-S-O-N Fant" on them

We got washer and dryer pedestals (which we have had for a month or so and have been a LIFESAVER!!)

B loaded up on fun things again

Trey and Steph

After most of the gifts were open, Bryson decided he needed to go swimming in all the wrapping paper. He thought it was THE funniest thing in the whole world. Then Steph and Trey jumped in and Bryson just died laughing! SO, naturally, everyone had to take turns hiding in the paper :)

The only way I could convince Bryson to take a break from playing with his toys and go take a nap was to tell him I would take him to go play in the snow as soon as he wakes up.

We rarely get snow where we live, so this was really Bryson's first time to enjoy and play in the snow. He loved it!!

He even made a snow angel :)

(this was supposed to happen Christmas Eve, but plans changed since my mom was sick)

When we were growing up, every year when we went to my grandparent's house in Houston, Santa made a special visit to the house. It was so special to see him and I love having the memories of all of the cousins getting SOOO excited that he came to our house. Unfortunately, my Granddad never seemed to be at the house at the same time Santa was there ;) I'm so excited that my parents wanted to carry on this special tradition with their grandchildern!!

Later that night Steph, Bryson and I made a gingerbread house while Santa got ready to make a stop at our house!!

We heard a knock on the door and Bryson ran to get it. I SOOO wish I had a picture of his face when he saw Santa at the door- he had absolutely NO clue Santa was going to be behind the door and really took him by surprise!

He was pretty apprehensive about getting near or talking to Santa. He wouldn't give him a hug or high five or even knuckles and the only way we could get a picture with him was if he sat in my lap and I sat by Santa.

But as soon as he left, he could NOT stop talking! He was SO excited about his new toy from Santa and to tell Papa (who just happen to come home from "picking something up from the store") all about it!

This video is so cute :) I love watching his excitement!!

It snowed pretty hard all day and even though we only live 20 minutes away, the roads were pretty bad, so we decided to spend the night.

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The next morning, Bryson and Mimi made pancakes

and as soon as everyone woke up, we all went outside for a snowball fight

it was so fun!

I was just an innocent bystander taking pictures....and then KaBOOM! ;)

It really brought back memories spending the night at my parent's house again. It was a fun morning playing in the snow!!

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year spending time with both of our families! Next year, we're going to have 2 more little girls to add to the mix which will just make it even more fun!!

Christmas Eve is full of tradition in my family. Every year, after the Christmas Eve service, we go back to my parent's house and get dinner ready. We always have to have the same exact thing every year: shrimp cocktail, steak, twice baked potatoes, broccoli rice casserole, rolls, and a happy birthday Jesus cake for dessert, all eaten in te formal dining room around candle light.

Well, things got a little crazy this year...

About a week ago, both of my parents came down with the flu. My dad got better pretty quickly, but my mom also had a sinus infection along with it and her illness lingered forever! We thought she would definitely be better for Christmas Eve, but about 2 hours before Michael, Bryson and I were going to leave for Christmas Eve service, my mom called saying her fever came back and we couldn't do it at their house. It was going to be at our house instead! We had an hour and a half to make our home "christmas eve worthy" all the while getting ready for church. Thankfully, B was napping so we could run around like crazy cleaning and getting things and set up!

We tried to wake up Bryson from his nap, but he was NOT having it. After a while, Michael just carried him to the car and we were going to change him in the parking lot. See... NOT a happy camper!! :(

Fortunately, he perked up when we told him we would get to sing "Away in a manger" at church in a few minutes. I kid you not, he/we have sung that song over 3,000 times in the last couple weeks.

This was his first time in "big church" since last Christmas Eve, so we talked about all the rules we had to obey: sitting in our chair, whispering, etc. He did GREAT!!

He loved getting to go up and listen to the Christmas story of stage with all the kids! Even though there were over a hundred kids up there, he (true to form) ended up squeezing his way all the way up the stairs closer to the book :)

He loved standing with Grandma and Papa and "singing" all the other songs, but his favorite things was lighting the candle!

There's something so perfect and pure about this picture that I just adore.

Afterwards, we went back to our house and met the rest of the family to start getting things ready for dinner. Everyone chipped in and helped. It was so weird not having my mom there; we really missed her. But, Brandon was really great at sending her minute by minute pictures and videos to keep her up to speed :)

I had started having some pretty intense pain in my right side (again) but tried to push through it while we were making dinner. I actually had also started timing my Braxton Hicks contractions.

We had a lovely and delicious candle lit dinner. :)

The pain in my side was so intense and the contractions were coming every 10 minutes, so my dad suggested I go call my doctor. The on call Dr told me the same thing as last time- most likely just muscle pain, so just lay down on a heating pad, drink lots of water and take some Tylenol and if it's not better in an hour, go to the hospital. I was pretty much freaking out on the inside. :/

We went ahead and went on with our nightly traditions. We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, read the Christmas story, sang some songs (Away in a Manger was requested about 8 times! :)) and then opened each others gifts.

After an hour or two, I started to feel a little better, but it was still a pretty crazy night! We hated that my mom was at home by herself on Christmas Eve, we missed her like crazy. But, all in all, it was a nice night! Totally not what we expected, but nice non-the-less :)